Robots review

2005.03.31 — Entertainment | Movies | Movie Reviews | by Andrew Cole

There's a great film in Robots somewhere, but this isn't it. It's not the threadbare plot or the weak characters (this is the kind of world where all robot parts are made by one company). We expect as much from an animated film and forgive it easily. The problem with Robots is the weak direction.

It was directed by Chris Wedge, who proved himself competent at this sort of thing with Ice Age, but here he falls short, piling gag on top of gag with little plot in between until you can hardly understand what is going on.

What could have been an enchanting indictment of modern postindustrial corporatism instead becomes a dizzying string of gags, some funny, some not, that never allow any build-up of suspense or anticipation to create a decent payoff. It is written by Lowell Gantz and Babaloo Mandel, the duo who penned Parenthood, City Slickers, and EdTV and so have demonstrated a good feel for the average viewer (emphasis on "average"), but actually produce some very clever and funny bits here. It's just the timing with which they're implemented that fails them.

Of course, even if you do understand it, good luck trying to actually make any sense out of the movie. Altho they are robots, the characters act just like humans for no apparent reason. I love absurdist humor as much as the next guy, but why do robots eat screws and bolts? Why do they have two parents? (One to assemble and one to read the instructions, apparently.) How did this humanless world come about? That's the secret I expected the characters to discover.

But no. The story is a familiar one. Ewan MacGregor is a young inventor robot out to make a name for himself in Robot City, where he meets up with a motley band of robots led by Robin Williams (apparently recovered from playing a robot in Bicentennial Man). MacGregor discovers that the world is being taken over by ruthless industrialist Greg Kinnear, who is trying to sell robots upgrades instead of repair parts.

The storyline is two parts Wizard of Oz and one part A Bug's Life, with MacGregor's Rodney the inventor bewildered by the big city, befriended by a band of misfits, and befuddled by an obstinate gatekeeper who does everything but shout "That's a horse of a different color!" In fact the similarity to The Wizard of Oz is so obvious that the filmmakers threw in a Tin Man cameo just for kicks. Rodney's reclusive wizard is Bigweld, played by (the surprisingly good) Mel Brooks, who has disappeared (for, as it turns out, no particular reason), leaving the bad guys in charge.

As for A Bug's Life, Rodney is a naive inventor who leaves his humble home to go to the bustling Robot City (not "Bug City," Mr. Lasseter) and whose inventions initially fail and annoy, but eventually succeed and delight. Luckily, his success helps him win the heart of a woman who is otherwise out of his league. When Rodney first arrives in the city, there's even a gag where he tries unsuccessfully to get busy passers-by to give him directions, exactly as naive inventor Flik does in A Bug's Life.

So maybe Pixar lifted that gag from Bugs Bunny first, but Bugs wasn't a naive inventor.

The setting, on the other hand, is equal parts Futurama and... well, actually it's pretty much all Futurama. Williams' rude robot character is even named "Fender" (not "Bender," Mr. Groening) and his arms fall off, just like Bender's occasionally did. Kinnear's smarmy Ratchet and his nasty mother Madame Gasket read like an imperfect melding of the Robot Devil and the heavies at Mom's Friendly Robot Company.

Robots isn't a complete waste of time, and might improve with a second viewing, when the story is secondary and you're free to focus on the marvelous visuals of Robot City and the silly gags you might have missed the first time... when they were clobbering you over the head so quickly and clumsily that you probably missed some of them.

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